When we plan the future are we trying to play God or are we trying to play it smart? Where is the line between a lack of trust in God’s plan for us and just being plain irresponsible? I have fears about the future, fears that cause my un-planning mind want to make like a crazy person and plan her whole life to a tee. Is it wrong that I don’t have answers when people ask me what I'm going to do? Is it wrong to be worried that I don’t have answers? My future is an open book, waiting to be written. I have some ideas in my mind; a general theme and a skinny storyline. But the details... they’re not there. But God knows. And I guess eventually I will too.
I'm working on some articles about the porn industry and UFC (completely opposite topics, I know). Both articles will feature notes from both Christian and secular perspectives. Stay tuned!!!
I recently viewed this video and it inspired me to write a blog post about the topic. I’ve been thinking
about religion a lot lately, which is not something I normally do (think about
religion, that is, not just think). But first, I want to say that I don't agree with everything in this video. I don't think Jesus was against religion, religion is a framework within which we can better understand God and through which we can serve Him. Granted, we have distorted and perverted it many times. But Jesus was against false religion, empty traditions and meaningless rituals, not religion in general. Or at least that is my understanding. Feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong, I am open to discussion. Anyway, this post elaborates on what I really think the heart of the matter is when it comes to religion, check it out.
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At the first young adults Bible study at my church I called
out a fellow believer who said that lying was wrong. “Is lying really wrong?” I
asked. “Does the Bible say that?” He answered by telling me that it was one of
the 10 commandments and I quickly refuted that the 10 commandments spoke specifically
about giving false witness about another person, but not generally about lying.
He then looked at me a bit funny. Like I had suddenly turned green and morphed
into an ogre-like personage. “Of course lying is wrong!” he said.
We ended up getting into a discussion about why lying was
wrong, and I gave him a few examples of where lying had actually turned out to
be beneficial in the Bible. Rahab hid the spies in Joshua 2 and was blessed by
God by the preservation of her life, Shiphrah and Puah were midwives in Egypt
who lied to protect the Hebrew babies and God blessed them because of this.
My friend agreed with these examples but said that they were
extenuating circumstances. He then managed to find a few verses to display that
the Bible does explicitly say that lying is wrong.
Now, before you jump to conclusions and categorize me as
another one of those liberal new-ageist Christians who try and disprove age-old
theology, hear me out.
My point in this argument was not to prove that lying was
okay. The Bible is clear about lying and that Jesus desires us to be people of
truth (check out Matthew 5:33-37, Psalm 31:18, Proverbs 30:8, Colossians 3:9,
etc). But rather, my point was that God cares more about where your heart is
and WHY you are lying (if you happen to be in a situation where you might need
to lie) than about the lying itself. Maybe I’m way off base here, but I think
that God cares more about your heart than He does about you making sure that
you follow every single solitary rule. This is why Jesus was so aggressive in
His words against the Pharisees and the religious leaders of His day. They were
so obsessed with getting every detail and action down pat that they forgot
about God altogether.
Again, my whole point here is not to say that lying is okay, or
that we should not be attentive about our words and seek to be speakers of
truth. But rather that if we only focus on lying, instead of focusing on the
heart behind the lie, we will only be washing the outside of the bowl while the
inside remains dirty. If we become obsessed with rules and regulations we may
end up missing Jesus entirely. And that’s why Jesus hates empty religion. He doesn’t
hate the Church, he doesn’t hate the Law. He loves the Church, He came to BUILD
His Church. He loves the Law, He came to FULFILL the Law. He hates
mindlessness. He hates emptiness. He hates meaningless tradition. He hates our
pride and the fact that we think we can earn our salvation by following rules.
He loves us and He loves GRACE.
So where does this leave us? Well, first with the
realization that if we desire to follow Jesus then we need to get to the heart
of things. We need to first allow God to get our hearts to the right place.
Jesus was kind to the Samaritan woman who was ‘friendly’ because she had a soft
heart. Jesus was harsh towards the religious Pharisees because their hearts
were hardened. Your heart is what matters to God. If you can’t follow all the
rules even though you love God and are trying so hard to get in line with
Him... well, welcome to humanity, my friend. Yes, Jesus says that if we love
Him we will obey His commands. But he says IF we LOVE Him. All our commandment adherence
means nothing if our hearts aren’t in it.
Once you partner with God to get your heart there I can
almost guarantee you that you won’t have to focus on all the rules anymore, because
your heart will continually be refined and you will continually want to choose
what is right and true and good. That is the beauty of it. Focus on the heart
and your actions will follow. Focus on only your actions and... who knows you
could end up a modern day Pharisee.
So stop stressing about the rules. If you want to be
sanctified tell God that and then show Him by making an effort to get to know
Him more (spend time in prayer, reading your Bible and doing His work). Then
let Him work in you. Trust me, this will take time. But you’ll get there and
one day you might realize that, hey, I don’t’ struggle with lying as much
anymore. Or hey, I stopped watching porn. AWESOME! God’s work is supernatural,
it’s like magic, it’s crazy the things He can do when we let Him into our
hearts and ask Him so change it.
Jesus’ yoke is easy and His burden is light. We don’t have
to do it all on our own. We don’t have to be legalistic and anal and rigid. We
are called to freedom. That is what is so beautiful about the Gospel message. So
go, friends, go and un-harden your hearts and be free in Christ Jesus.
I don't want a good man searching for a mate.
I don't want a good man searching for love.
I don't want a good man searching for a good woman.
There is sadness in our lives; tragedy. I think I have seen my
family cry more tears in the past 3 months than I have ever seen them cry in
all the months before. I have often felt like Job. Like Satan is just waiting
for me to crack, to curse God and be done with it all. But I refuse, and so
does my family. Instead, I, in one of the most difficult times of my life, have
found myself being more thankful than I ever remember being before. I am thankful
for each day, for each moment with family, for each breath; thankful for warmth
and good friends, thankful that I have a God who is the God of all comfort and thankful
that He blesses those who mourn.
I don’t know how my heart got to this point. It wasn’t me. I
didn’t do it. And yet here I am, at peace; thankful. It has to be God’s doing,
because I know that my normal inclination in difficult times isn’t to sing
praises to God or thank Him for all that He has given me. This optimism; this thankfulness;
this humility has come from a power that is outside me. And maybe that’s what
makes it so wonderful. Maybe the fact that I know it is not my own doing is
what makes it so utterly easy. I think that is what Jesus is talking about when
He says, “Come to me all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” He’s
saying, “Stop trying, stop trying to pull the weight on your own. Instead take
my yoke, which is easy, and my burden, which is light, and just let Me carry
you’. I don’t I ever really understood what Jesus was talking about in that
passage until this moment. I almost thought that maybe that passage was
interpreted wrong, or maybe I didn’t have enough wisdom to understand it,
because being a Christian had never seemed easy to me. But that’s because this
whole time I had been trying to do it all on my own. I have a habit of that, of
not delegating and taking advantage of the wonderful help that people offer me.
Maybe it’s a humility issue, I don’t know, but I just always felt like I was
putting someone out, like asking for help so often meant that they would get
sick of me and just... not be around anymore.
But God’s not like that, and honestly I don’t think most people
are like that either, at least your friends shouldn't be like that. We need to
believe that every heart has the capacity for compassion, otherwise we’ll be
stuck in pits of despair trying to deal with everything on our own instead of
sharing our burdens with one another like Paul instructs us to in Galatians 6.
And we need to believe that Jesus was telling the truth when He said that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. We need to believe that He wants to walk with us and to carry us in times of despair. We need to be willing to be real, raw, and vulnerable with one another. We need to believe that old Footprints poem. ____________________________________________________________
Footprints in the Sand
One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky. In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only.
This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord, “You promised me Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”
The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”
